Originally Posted by RedV

Yup, that's right. As my Evo sits right now in the garage it has a substantial dent in the rear driver's side door, and a smashed rear driver's side tail light. But the good news is the guy who did it is currently sitting in a jail cell too. So here's the story...

I'm coming home from work and getting off the freeway when an old Ford Explorer begins tail gating me, to the point that I can almost no longer see his headlights. As we pull off the highway onto a normal 4-lane road he continues tail gating me. Then, apparently frustrated that I'm not driving fast enough he pulls behind the person in the other lane. Well they're driving even slower than I was so he then pulled back in behind me. This continued until we arrived at a stop light.

As I came to a stop at the light he pulls into the left turn lane beside me. He then proceeds to get out of his car and walk up and yells at me to get out. I roll down the window and he yelled at me to 'get out so we can settle this'. I didn't get out so he proceeds to kick the side of the car. At this point I get out of the car. I look and see a nice foot sized dent in the side of my car.

He continues yelling at me, but at this point I just calmly walked to the back of his car and got his license plate. I then went and got back in my car. He got back in his car and began to drive away. I then pulled into a gas station at the corner and called the police.

A few minutes went by as I talked with the operator on the phone. As I'm talking with the operator I see the same brown Ford Explorer pulling back into the gas station. The same guy now gets back out of his car and is holding a tire iron. As I tell the operator on the phone she says to get back into my car and lock the doors. I do this as he walks up. I'm now sitting in the car and he's yelling, "Yeah, like that dent?". He then walks to the back of the car and smashes the tail light with the tire iron. Then he gets back in his car and pulls out of the gas station.

Shortly (like less than a minute), a police cruiser pulls up to me at the gas station. I hang up with the operator and relay my story to the cop, giving him the license number, a description of the vehicle and the guy. He radios this info and within a couple minutes he says his partner has him pulled over.

The cop asks me to follow him down the road to where they have the guy pulled over. I then identified him as he sat in the back of the police car and gave the officer a statement about what happened.

He briefly went and talked with the other officer and came back. He said the guy would be going to jail, and may be charged with felony assault and property damage. The officer also told me that the guy had had his very young child in the car the whole time.

There's actually a little part of me that feels bad sending the father of a young child to jail for something like this. But on the other hand, he obviously brought this on himself.

So I'll go and get an estimate tomorrow on the damage. I'm really not THAT upset about it because it's really just cosmetic damage to the car. But I guess I just share this story as a warning to watch out for the nuts out there guys.

Originally Posted by coffeeslug

wow EvoM is chock full of gun toting morons

Originally Posted by Jeff_Jeske

I was a bouncer for 5 years and used to be a bit of a scrapper..... but I've had my **** kicked enough times to know that no matter the size of the person anything can happen. These days chemical enhancments can turn the smallest twerp into a machine.

All you guys talk about guns .... but a weapon can get you into a lifetime of trouble.... think more like a b!tch..... I carry a decent sized can of pepper spray with me. I think it has a range of 12 feet. Its effective on more than one target. And if nothing else it should give you time to get way or an advantage in hand to hand combat.

Originally Posted by Wicked E

Really??

You think having a Concealed Weapons Permit is because I'm a moron?? Who the *uck are you to judge me? So much for your over generalizing statement.

I chose to train to be allowed to protect myself and my family from harm's way. Keep chugging around life in your rosy colored glasses and maybe just maybe someday you'll come back to this post you made and realize you should have been carrying. God forbid you ever put yourself in a situation needing a firearm to defend yourself.

Are you a tree hugging liberal by any chance?

Originally Posted by coffeeslug

The OP handled the situation perfectly well with his wits.